# Current Development State

## What We're Actually Using

### ✅ NEW Archipelago Components (Following Plan)
- **Container Orchestration** (`core/container/`) - Our NEW implementation
- **Security Modules** (`core/security/`) - Our NEW implementation  
- **Performance Modules** (`core/performance/`) - Our NEW implementation
- **Parmanode Compatibility** (`core/parmanode/`) - Our NEW implementation
- **App Manifests** (`apps/*/manifest.yml`) - Our NEW YAML format
- **Container RPC Endpoints** (`core/startos/src/container/`) - Our NEW API layer
- **Vue.js Container Views** - Our NEW UI components

### ⚠️ TEMPORARY StartOS Dependencies (To Be Replaced)
- **Backend Binary** (`startbox`) - Still using StartOS binary temporarily
- **Backend Core** (`core/startos/`) - StartOS fork, being extended with our modules
- **Some RPC Infrastructure** - StartOS RPC system, we're adding to it

## Development Strategy

### Phase 1: Extension (Current)
- ✅ Use our new container orchestration modules
- ✅ Add container RPC endpoints to StartOS backend
- ✅ Use our new app manifest system
- ⚠️ Still running `startbox` binary (StartOS) as base

### Phase 2: Refactoring (Next)
- 🔄 Replace StartOS-specific code with Archipelago-native
- 🔄 Create our own backend binary (`archipelago` or `arch`)
- 🔄 Remove StartOS dependencies
- 🔄 Build on Alpine Linux base

### Phase 3: Complete Independence
- ✅ Pure Archipelago implementation
- ✅ No StartOS code remaining
- ✅ Alpine Linux + Podman only

## What We Should Be Doing NOW

### For Development
1. **Use Mock Backend** - For UI development, mock backend is fine
2. **Use Our New Modules** - All container code uses `archipelago-container`
3. **Use Our App Manifests** - All apps defined in `apps/*/manifest.yml`
4. **Mark StartOS Code** - Add `// TODO: Refactor to Archipelago-native` comments

### For Backend
- Currently: Using StartOS backend as base, extending with our modules
- Future: Build our own Archipelago backend that uses ONLY our modules

## Key Point

**We ARE following the plan** - we built all the NEW Archipelago components. We're just using StartOS backend temporarily as a base while we extend it. The plan was to "integrate with existing Rust backend via enhanced API layer" - which is what we did.

But you're right - we should be moving toward complete independence. The mock backend is fine for now since we're developing the UI and container management features.